


panem sumebant

by caandleknight



Category: The Hunger Games (Movies) RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fear, Mild Smut, No Games AU, Trauma, evolution of them, the capitol ruins everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26592637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caandleknight/pseuds/caandleknight
Summary: (The bread they shared: an approximate translation) Two times Gale and Katniss share bread, and all the time in between.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Gale Hawthorne
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	1. unconventional

**Author's Note:**

> panem sumebant- the bread they shared

It's really horrible that the capital names itself 'bread' when everyone is starving, isn't it? It's something Gale likes to ponder about, or scream about, if he's surrounded by trees and comforting grey eyes.

**Chapter 1: un·con·ven·tion·al**

**_adjective_ **

**not based on or conforming to what is generally done or believed.**

"Look what I shot." He teases, smirking. Holding up the arrow impaled bread, his eyes twinkle with trying mirth. He's trying, trying so hard to quench her anxiety. They have 64 slips amongst themselves and their siblings to worry about.

He sees her face light up, beautifully. His eyes linger on her brow, and he wonders when he started noticing random things about her face. He can't place it. As a boy, lanky and overgrown, he'd always known she'd been pretty, in her ways; it was a unique, innocent perception—she was pretty, passable, unsuspecting. After all, she was twelve and small when they met, and that's no time to determine someone's beauty. She's older now, sixteen, still small, but beautiful in ways most people can't comprehend, choose not to understand.

It's in her smiles: they are rare little things that must be earned, but the good thing is, they cost less every time. He used to haggle and pull, joke on her braids, trying harshly to see her teeth pull up in laughter. He was an arrogant boy who was used to looking at a girl and seeing her smile. It used to make him sad, thinking she was unhappy.

He voiced this with his mother, and she'd smacked him on his hand, telling him how rude it was.

"Do you expect boys to be smiley and happy when you look at them?" She didn't hold back, going off him endlessly. Her soul was strong even if this cold district never held its tongue. "You want her to smile at you? Earn it." Then her eyes hardened, "but you aren't entitled to it, just because you tried. Remember that young man. Ignorance isn't pretty on anyone." Then she set water to a boil over their makeshift fire place, preparing to clean. He heard her mumbling about him being "just like his father at his age".

When a boy's father is dead and that boy is fifteen, it doesn't matter if the comparison is to horrible traits like ignorance, Gale had never felt prouder.

Gale's perspective shifted gears very quickly. He was young and arrogant, he tells himself when he cringes at his old mindsets.

He still tried to make her smile, and now he tried earnestly.

When he did see her smile, his first thought was, beautiful. It confused him, the thought. He was seventeen, and she was fifteen when he'd seen the first full smile she'd given. He had actually seen it before, directed at a sickly frail blonde girl named Primrose. Gale had adored the child rather quickly.

But when a smile like hers, rare and in between each word, so far in the river you have to dive down to touch it, is floating within your reach, it's a beautiful thing.

Then, her beauty blasted through him in everything she did. It never mattered what it was anymore, he always stopped to catch a glance, always half-hoped she'd stop to catch a glance of him, too.

Her beauty is in the way her braid follows her focus when the wisps of feathered arrows tickle her nose, meet a freckle, and the way the frayed strings kiss her lips.

It was a pathetic day when he realizes he was wishing to be a frayed piece of string.

He'll never know how she takes up such little space but manages to fill every crevice with her: her space pours over the edges around him, goes outside the lines. It fills his soul past its limits, and makes him feel things he never had before.

He just can't not see her.

Nothing will happen, he tells himself. He pulls the bread off of the arrow, breaks it, gives her the bigger half.

He stares at her, half-hoping she'll stare back. He holds all his grief in that bakery bread, tries not to thinking about the meaning behind breaking bread in district 12.

It's reaping day after all, no time to half-hope for anything.


	2. beauty

**Chapter 2: beau·ty**

**_noun_ **  
**a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight.**

—

Here he is: it's his last reaping, his brother's first, and his eyes still instantaneously find her braided crown in the masses. She turns and meets his eyes. They share a gravitational worry.

In a world where Katniss was never reaped: in this world, he will kiss her with patience, and there is still so much desperation, but Gale knows how to wait. This will eventually happen. That's how it's meant to be; the Katniss of the games is changed, abused, no longer meant for his hands. In that world, his hands are also changed, harder, making snares for people instead of animals, not leaving enough time for his soul, his heart to realize that it really is different, that he was wrong when he told Katniss it'd be the same. The Capitol ruins everything its ever touched; there are no exceptions. Tamper with a jigsaw puzzle and it no longer fits together.

This is not that world though. They have both escaped the lottery, and now she hunts and he mines, and one day he kisses her.

There was dirt and branches in her hair, coal dust in his, and he kisses her without warning and with abandon. For once, he's doing something for them, not for their families, and certainly never for the Capitol.

Leaves fall from her hair when his fingers run through. It's rough and sudden, and he wishes her lips were the first he'd ever touched. He'd been young, he tells himself, digging his pickaxe into the coal the next day. He had been so stupid, never seeing someone who was always right in front of him.

After all, she had been twelve, at one time, and people's first perception of someone is usually what sticks, but one day, the eldest Hawthorne child decided to look down—now only seven inches, not a foot—and he saw that she'd grown, grown into an unconventional beauty, she was a girl who turned many heads, but never for any specific reason.

You always notice a girl like Katniss Everdeen, but you never know why.

Peeta, Darius, Cray, Haymitch, they can all attest to that, not all sexually, but they notice her, never not notice her. In the Hob, Darius can't help but touch, grasp her maverick independence, though he never gets far, and Gale's glaring has nothing to do with it: she stops him with her own strength.

Haymitch Abernathy even processes her, through the drunk, sees the fire in her.

Haymitch watches her and Gale, and wants one of them to be his tributes. It's selfish, and he knows that, but for once he wants eyes he can look into when they come home, not a casket.

Gale, honestly, is probably one of the last in the district to see her, and Sae knows it, is aware of the day his eyes opened, aware of his flaring jealously. Aware the exact moment he had become receptive to what he felt. His eyes had dulled to cement, and he irrationally threatened a peacekeeper, and after Katniss reprimanded his aggression towards Darius, the boy stared at his hands, angry and contemplative. Greasy Sae knew exactly what he was debating in his own body. He'd read every page in Katniss Everdeen's book before he'd looked at the cover. Sae was giddy, knew she was likely to win the betting pool.

(The day he looked at the cover is a day he'll forever remember. It's filled with braids, Sae's soup, looking down seven inches, red hair, peacekeeping and a bunch of jealousy. It's a tale that's been told many times.)

And so, the day he kissed her was one of the best days of his life. The snow had been melting and the flowers were growing—it's a time of new beginnings, they say.

That day, he gave her all of who he was, all at once. It was the same day she just started giving him pieces of who she wanted to be: they were small pieces, but she'd get there.

She wasn't ready to give him anything more than a kiss of friendship. When he pulled away, he saw it in her eyes. He knew this, told her it was fine. At first he'd been hurt, reasonably so, but then, he remembered what his mother had said, the pink sting on his hand.

He did not expect anything from her: he had no right to. He still felt his heart closing though, stitching it's damages, so he pulled back, receded away from her.

He heard his mother in his mind, "childish, unfair, unreasonable." Guilt followed him, for backing off so harshly. He saw her eyes when he pulled away, hazy, and curious, but ultimately scared.

He reassured her, said nothing would changed. They were fine, and she nodded, pretending it didn't happen.

Everything changed, his soul was on the other side of the forest even if his body was here, beside her.

He refused to let himself believe she felt the same as him anymore, wouldn't let his mind take a glance and turn it into a love story. With every contact, his hand pulled away first. When her eyes questioned him and her arms crossed her chest with inquiries, his resolve faltered, and he felt an explanation was in order: he never gave one.

Even when she initiated contact, he always pulled away first: guilt followed him like her eyes.

Then, he realized he hadn't actually pulled back all that much. This is what friendship is supposed to be, very little touching, lots of talking. Friends aren't supposed to hold each other like they used to, so Gale realized that this was better. This was not misleading, for either of them, and they were friends.

Friends.

Friends is fine, he tells himself.

_—_


	3. subtle

**Chapter 3: sub·tle**

**_adjective_ **

**(especially of a change or distinction) so delicate or precise as to be difficult to analyze or describe.)**

Subtlety was always a forté of Gale's; he could always make you look his way while simultaneously making you think he'd had nothing to do with it, but when it came to her, he got away with nothing. She'd look right through him, take a glance at his heart and keep walking. She was not apathetic: she just took none of his shit.

So they remained friends, and grey eyes panicked and her braid whipped open when she realized all their touching was going away. It wasn't severe but she missed the wisps of his fingers on hers when adjusting her snares. She missed his comforting hand on her back when they walked through the Hob, with the creepy sneers and unwelcomed eyes. He still kept them off her, but his touch was always completely void from the equation.

She saw the cracks forming in their solidity, and she's trying to cover it up, fulfill the growing cavern. She went to the bakery, looking for a peace offering, but the witch of Mellark was there, and she was never in the mood to trade, "not with the likes of her." She'd spit.

On her way out, she saw Gale with a beautiful young woman, and she nearly collided with them, in fact. It was clear what was happening: their hands held each others softly. Insecurities bubbled out of her so quickly, she didn't even have it in her to acknowledge them. She met his gaze, and then the pair were gone and she was empty, lonely.

(and mourning opportunities, she'd realized later.)

A time ago, before his lips met hers—opened themselves up, while hers closed off in panic—his calloused fingers used to tingle hers while she'd tighten her bow string. In the cold, he'd snatched her hand, claiming it'd help thaw their icy fingertips. Even though it only made her palms sweaty and her fingers blue, she said it'd help too. He used to fiddle with her braid, much like Darius, but it was always more endearing when a Hawthorne did it. Little Posy loved Katniss' hair, could never get enough, weaving endlessly with no goal or skill, but it was adorable. Katniss realized she hadn't seen his family in ages.

Then, he had kissed her, and it was good, but the part that scared her was that she had kissed him back, with no hesitation. She promised herself she'd never do that, never put herself at risk like that. She thought, for only a second, that it was fine, spectacular even, the way his tongue danced with hers and his fingers played with her hair, but then, she smelled the coal on his shirt, and the ashy stains on his face.

In her head a coal mine concussed around, and a woman sat idle in a chair. This woman was catatonic and unresponsive, but in her mind's eye, instead of blonde, her hair was black as the coal that killed her grey-eyed husband.

(The snow was melting, and the flowers were growing, but she was no where near ready for a new beginning.)

Her everything itched and ached, because, in spite of a mine collapse and her crippling fears, her body still wanted that, wanted him.

She wanted to give him everything he ever wished for, but she knew she couldn't, knew she wasn't ready for all the commitment and happiness it promised, for all the endings and despair it risked.

(Too bad she didn't know that desiring to give someone everything, was the biggest step toward doing just that.)

—

Months after the day he kissed her, came the days he tried to get over her, but it was almost as though every step he took away, she filled with a step forward. It irritated him endlessly: she didn't want all of him, but wouldn't let him give away the rest of the parts she didn't need. Sae noticed their distance, knew something happened.

Gale explored his options. There were many girls around town he could take out, many that would give in.

He needed to move on; this static place wasn't healthy. If he felt bad about pulling away and putting up walls, he felt worse about moving on. Just his lips touching another girl's felt like betrayal in his mind.

He was so angry with himself, for feeling that he needed to move on. They never had a thing. He was just hopeless in his ability to know what's going on around him. His second biggest pride, after snares when hunting, was his ability to sense, know what's in his environment.

The thing is, he always missed things with Katniss, and it's because he didn't want to see it, almost refused to. First, he'd denied her undeniable beauty, and now, he couldn't accept that she didn't want him.

(Not in the way he wanted her. In the back of his head he'd always known, but his heart refused to see it. It grasped on to every hint of a glance and formed a little love story.)

He was moving on too quickly, he told himself, even though he hadn't been to the slagheap since the day he looked down seven inches—moving on, too quickly—but the blonde he was dragging by the hand showed no protest.

(Moving on required force, he'd learned, even when you weren't ready.)

Passing over Katniss on the way there, he stuttered harshly. The merchant girl banged her nose in his shoulder, protesting weakly. He saw the braided girl read right through him, recognize what was happening, and then step out of the way, robotically, as though she didn't even know him. His guilt hit him hard: to most Katniss appeared as though she didn't care, to him he saw more care than she was willing.

(Moving on, too quickly,) The blonde started dragging him, but his eyes never left Catnip's. She turned and stared back, with her crossed arms and tensed shoulders. It was after the girl, who he didn't even know the name of, turned the corner that Gale realized: she was exiting the bakery.

It was the bakery that kids like them, with black hair and dark skin, don't enter unless they know they'll leave with something of value, because smelling the rising bread made their stomachs hurt, groan like old bed springs. He also realized she was holding nothing in her crossed arms, hadn't made any trades. His brain helpfully reminded him of Peeta Mellark, the boy who was in love with the girl, who broke bread for her long before Gale ever had the chance.

(He knew of this favour because Katniss had told him, and after that, Gale noticed how those blue eyes followed her. He met the gaze once, burned it with challenge—the blond had just looked passive, open—it unsettled him.)

Katniss went into the bakery and came out with nothing Gale could see, so she must have gone in for something else.

Someone, his thoughts reminded him.

Gale dragged the merchant girl faster, fucked her harder, and after, he still felt guilty, like a traitor. He felt so guilty for pulling away from her, could see her frustration. He didn't know how to feel, what to do.

The next day, he was still there, still sitting right beside her on their rock. He was right beside her; he was only miles away. No matter how hard he tried to run, he was always on their rock before dawn cracked the sky.

One Sunday, two weeks later, his subtle tendencies showed. "I'm going to take Posy out next Sunday." It was a good excuse, a good effort, to get away from her.

Then she offered to join him, ignoring his silent plea.

They spent the day wandering around the district. Posy went on and on about things Gale'd told her about Katniss, and about all his little mortifying stories. He would've been embarrassed, but there was nothing left to be said. She already knew everything.

Posy chattered as they wandered the cold streets, chattered on about her cold toes, trying her Hawthorne subtlety on Katniss. Regardless of the fact that Katniss knew what the young girl was hinting, already familiar with their subtleness, she still picked her up. When she rested Posy on her hip, Gale lost his breath. Katniss holding a child that looked extremely like Gale made his heart pound, his throat close.

(He will never be over her.)

And when she turned, eyes meeting his, he saw everything he felt and more, coming through in flickers. Her eyes held it in like a dam, unlike his steady stream.

When they took Posy home, Katniss laid her into bed with Gale over her shoulder in the door. He watched lazily, pretended this was normal. With how awkward they'd been, tonight he felt like everything had healed, as close to normal as it could be. He could feel his mother around the house, whispering the guidances of her values.

(He expected nothing from her, and knew all the same, that he would never get over her. )

With Posy sleeping, he let her out of the house. They whispered each other little anecdotes, pretending his family was sleeping. They were the secretive teenagers who thought their parents were ignorant. There was a gravity between them, being held by the steel of their eyes, and when their eyes met, the flinted steel sparked. She leaned in, let gravity do its work. They pulled together and then apart seemlessly in conversation, going from an inch to six and then back without noticing.

Then, she noticed, jumping back. His face showed no signs of shock: of course not, he was prepared for it.

It hurt her to know that he was ready for her to hurt him.

She turned and she walked home, and he watched her back. Whispers filled his cheek, begging to come out.

(Not getting over her was fine, or he hoped it was.)

—

When the next Sunday came, she was absent.

As he sat alone in the forest, near their rock, the world seemed empty around him, and a tear or two fell from his eyes. Not dramatically, but they slid down his face slowly, and his features never shifted. He stared at a tree while they fell into the dirt and disappeared.

He'd never admit to anyone he cried. The pressure had built up, and his inadequacies boiled over. He would've sulked all afternoon, but he had a family to feed.

Two dark spots stained the dirt where he had been sitting, and no where else. They will be gone when the flowers bloom.

He got up, hunted, traded, started the walk home, trying to ignore her absence, but on his way there, he caught Katniss in a window—a bakery window. The two squirrels on his back were so heavy, that his toes anchored the dirt.

Everything in him closed, stuttered shut so quickly. The pressure was building again, and his stomach was squeezing in on itself so aggressively that tension was begging to escape his fingertips.

(He saw her, talking to Peeta Mellark, the boy who was in love with the girl, and felt inadequate, again, desperately undermined. She was pointing at different pastries, asking about them, like she cared.)

He turned his head, blinked water back, and walked right by the door. Damn the squirrels: they'd make a great soup.

—

He spent far too long on the squirrels that night, maybe it was his blurry eyes, watered down, but it was probably him trying to hold his anger back from destroying perfectly good food.

His mother came out, with watching eyes. She started questioning him, and he refused to meet her gaze. "I'm fine." He supplied, fingers shaking. The knife shook.

(Was he not enough? Would he ever be? If only he hadn't kissed her, and this all could've just gone away, never happened.)

"Gale."

His eyes met hers, and he collapsed into her. His knife fell into the ground. The half skinned squirrel lies on the trunk. "It's okay. It'll be fine." She told him.

He was so much bigger than her, but there was nothing like a mother's hug. Her arms crowned his frame, supporting it like it was nothing. She told him that how he was reacting was fine, that maybe this was for the best. He trembled.

Rory was watching over their mother's shoulder, and he felt ashamed, "it's okay to cry, Gale. Your father did, when things were hard. I do, too. You've been holding this in for a long time."

How she knew this was about Katniss, he'd never know.

When boy's father is dead, and you compare that boy to him, he never feels prouder. He also wanted Rory to feel proud, because their father is in him too.

—

Katniss was at his door before sun cracked the sky. It was Monday, and she held out a bag, a bakery bag.

"A peace offering." Her shoulders were open, and she seemed as though she could break if he touched her. Her eyes screamed vulnerability. "For ditching you yesterday. I... had lots to think about."

He took the bag, and in it was simple bread. After that, she walked him to work, told him to come back. He promised he would, and grabbed her hand, subtly, delicately as he pulled away. They were rough, he noted. They were beautiful.

He came back, exhausted, but there he was, as promised. She was waiting, and she walked him home.

She was there the next morning, and the next, and the one after that. Everyday, she walked him home. On Sunday she met him in the woods, like always.

He tried to force his mind to not make this a big deal, told himself her intentions were platonic—they'd never be anything else—this wasn't something he should even be thinking about.

Nothing changed, but everything had.

(He'd never get over her, but now, he was fine with that.

Mostly.)

—


	4. memory

**Chapter 4: mem·o·ry**

**_noun_ **

**(something remembered from the past; a recollection.)**

—

He asked her about him, without malice, but with lots of caution. "Do you like Peeta Mellark?" Her eyes widened, and her brow faltered. Leaves were orange, and it was a bad question to ask.

Opening a snare, he busied his fingers, hid his gaze.

"No." She tried to look him in the eye, wiping an arrow clean distractedly. "why?" Silence stilled as leaves fell. Autumn was always static, unmoving. In these months the world began to freeze over, and it was your last chance to mark your footprints into the mud before a frost suffocated the ground.

He shrugged. "Why are you at the bakery so much, then?" He was aware that his line of questioning was presumptuous, unwarranted, but he just needed to know.

"I was trying to figure out what would make you..." She froze stoically. The she put the arrow in the sleeve and trudged away.

"What?" He urged, needing an answer, any answer.

She stopped, "forgive me?" She crossed her arms like she always did when she was uncomfortable. He had nothing to forgive her for. It wasn't her job to make him happy. His mind was having a hard time focusing on how thoughtful the gesture was. All he could grasp was Peeta Mellark. Mellark.

"So you ask him?" Mellark. Bread. (Better than him.)

His hands squeezed and his throat thickened in steadying effort.

"He was very helpful. You liked the bread didn't you?"

Bread. Mellark.

His boots were heavy in the mud. He chose to ignore her question, and they continued hunting. He still couldn't stop thinking about it.

An hour or so later, he asked, "What exactly did you want me to forgive you for?" Frustration leaked into his tone. Then, there was silence, all he could hear was the birds as they migrated. She was still.

"...For not showing up on Sunday."

"For missing a Sunday?" She flinched and looked away. She was lying: he could tell, because he could aways tell.

He took a wild guess, but at the same time, he knew he was right.

"You're sorry for saying no to me?" Her widening eyes meant that he was right. The fact that she'd think that he'd do that made his heart clench. "That is ridiculous, Catnip." She glanced over her shoulder but didn't meet his gaze: her back is taut like a bow string. She shouldn't think she owed him anything: he knew she didn't.

"No." Was all she supplied, all she volunteered. She never gave herself up for anything. "I just wanted, wished, to make this all go away." _To forget about you._ His eyes widened. He stepped back and there was a mark in the mud. Tracing the outline of the print with his eyes painfully, he failed to notice that she'd returned to her spot in front of him.

She stepped in the marred mud, recoating it. His eyes traced up to hers, seven inches down, and they glistened with water. He spoke. "I don't want any of this to ever go away."

"But it can." She was solemn, reciting her lines like she has before. "Eventually, it will, when there're too many chances. For all we know, the mines could explode tomorrow, and you'd be gone! We could get arrested for poaching! All it takes is a name in the bowl, Gale!"

He has thought the same thoughts, and weeks ago, he'd wished the same wish. Press delete, to make it all disappear. It'd be so much easier if he wasn't stuck on one person, but it'd be so much worse.

"I don't want any of it to go away, no matter what." Her eyes withered and closed, and her braid hugged her soul, unbreached and protected.

"I will never give back the memories I had with my father, even if his death caused me more pain and struggle than I could have imagined."

His entire life had spun out of control in an instant. He was like yarn on a spindle, and the spindle had been falling. You couldn't stop it when it was spinning: you had to wait until it was pulled taut, reached it's end, before you could return the yarn to its home.

The canary collapsed, dead, and the mines did the same.

"Would you?"

She froze, and he could tell he'd caught her completely off guard. Guilt flooded his seams: why would he ask that, something so vulnerable? She took a couple steps backward, and her eyes were flaring. Her cheeks were white and her shoulders quivered.

The simple question completely crushed her mindset, emptied her arguments. Would she give away Primrose, all of her love and devotion, to avoid the possible pain of her being reaped? Would she do so with her father?

"I-I don't know."

(If not, why had she done so with Gale?)

She turned and she ran. He watched her back as she flew, once again feeling inadequate. She took her game bag with her so she'd be fine. She didn't need him, he knew that, but he wished, just for once, that she'd want him.

(Her footprints fit perfectly in his. The notion will be frosted over and remembered until the spring,

when things change.)

—

She didn't walk him to work that week. His mornings were sufficiently dreary. The mud froze.

—

The next Sunday, she arrived late, with bags under her eyes and a fear in her walk, but she showed up. It was more than he'd expected.

They hunted in silence, and when it was over, they went their separate ways. It's just like before: nothing had changed, and everything was different.

Sundays were days he worshipped, even when they were like this. Awkward and sad, but he loved her, and on Sundays, he got to see her. He realized something that Sunday.

(He loves her. Panic erupts)

When he came home, his mother was waiting and Posy was asking about Katniss. The child had recently been idolizing the archer.

(He loves her, with scowls and all. He just figured that out.)

"You look just like your father." Hazelle said, taking his game bag to organize through. "And you're making him proud."

His father was dead, she couldn't know that to be a fact, but said it like it was one.

(When a boy's father is dead, and you tell him how proud his father would be, he feels a echoing sense of despair.

And he wouldn't give that up for anything.)

—

She walked him to work Friday. Showing up at his door, arms crossed and nervous, she smiled at him tentatively.

His stare was wary, and he didn't say a word. He watched her through the doorway. They were awkward and still until she reached across, took his hand and tugged.

She dragged all the way to work, and on the way she said, "You don't want to be late, right?" He watched her back as she dragged him, and he knew they'd be alright. He squeezed her hand.

(He shouldn't love her this much—love her enough to let her come and go as she pleases—but he does anyway.)

—

She was there the next Sunday too, and this time, things were different. She had an air in her, and she shot straight, but that's always been constant.

They hunted in silence, but they circled each other. She initiated contact, helped him with the snare line. She confused him.

She blew in with the wind, just like she used to. She was here, and then she was gone, and then she came back.

(She always comes back to him. Or maybe it was the other way around.)

"I wouldn't give it up." She whispered, resetting a snare distractedly

(Or maybe it went both ways.)

He wouldn't either, even if this never goes anywhere. Even if he was stuck like this for the rest of his life, with someone right beside him, but just out of reach.

As they walked to the Hob, she grabbed his hand. She was slow and unsure while she did it, and she held it roughly. This was different then when she walked him to work, and he refused to acknowledge why.

They made trades and chatted with Sae. Their hands held each other's at random intervals in the night and with every grasp came more ease; it became natural.

In that moment, everything changed, but at the same time, nothing was different.

(Maybe she loves him back. He thinks that night.

Maybe.)

—

The next Sunday went similarly, but at the end, she kissed him. She did it slowly, unsurely, just like her handholding, and she was clearly inexperienced, but endearing all the same. On her cement block to represent a deck, her mouth opened to him.

They had been walking home from the Hob and the moon was rising. The first bits of snow were falling to the ground. They were attracted to her hair, and flakes caught in the strands.

When they came to her door, she turned to him. Her breathing was distracting; his eyes followed the fog. She stepped into his space, into the fog, went onto her toes, to the tips, and kissed him.

The pressure was warm. The sparks were boiling. Katniss thought of a mine explosion, but she just saw him, smiling cocky, loving silently, and she wanted all of him.

(You want all of someone after they're dead, but you can only get it when they're alive.

She's tired of waiting until people die to finally love them.)

He leant down to compensate, because her stretched stance was shaky. She was still on her toes and he was crunched over, but it was his favourite kiss he'd ever had, even if she didn't know how to kiss. She was too tense, too structured. He didn't care.

(He didn't want to think about it too much, but he'd had worse kisses.)

When he went home that day, his mother smiled at him—like she knew. He was embarrassed, and his cheeks were red. Hiding in the room he shared with Rory, he stared up at the ceiling and definitively decided: he never wanted to get over her.

He had a sneaking feeling, that he'd never have to.

—

She was there the next morning, of course she was. She kissed him before he went underground. Her hand held his incredibly tightly, like he'd die if she let go.

She had to let go.

—

They did this everyday for the next week, and it never got easier. She showed up everyday after that, anyway.

—

He comes back every day. He loves her, and she loves him.

She wouldn't give this up for anything.

—

(He expected nothing from her, but she gave him everything he ever asked for anyway.

That's what love is, isn't it? Giving without expecting, its very rare: where it goes both ways.)

—-


	5. epilogue

**Chapter 5: ep·i·logue**

**_noun_ **

**(a final or concluding act or event.)**

—

Years after the day she kissed him came the days he tried to ask her to marry him: he'd tried subtle, and he'd failed subtle. She looked at his little attempts mockingly. Wrapping a katniss root around a hawthorne branch did not bode well. She raised a brow, laughed for his pleasure, and he smiled sheepishly. Then, she turned away.

For a while, he thought she was ignoring his gestures, in between all the kisses. Ignoring his silent request, because she doesn't want to marry, never wanted to. She told him that; he knows that. He has the urge to just ask, but fear holds his throat. What if she doesn't want him as much as he wants her? They'd never discussed what they were, never had to, but now he wants to. She had kissed him, and then it was just normal.

But then, "if you want something, Gale, you're gonna have to ask." She sways her eyes to his, and nonchalantly throws a rabbit over her shoulder. His fear climbed high, but a challenge was set.

She is never subtle, and Gale never turns down a challenge.

He raises his shoulders and he hardens his gaze, two grey rocks, rough and uncensored. This little dare of hers sparks his bravery. The coal in his fingertips whisper encouragements.

"Marry me." It's a desperate question, but it comes out certain. Like his voice knew the answer before his heart did.

There is no hesitation, his subtly hid nothing from the start. "Of course." She looks him in the the eye softly, and then turned around. It was that easy, and Gale wishes it could've always been that easy.

But it wasn't, and now, they're getting married.

—

Two weeks later they signed papers, and they are supplied a house—a shack, really—to call home. Their mothers gifted them small herbs and their siblings danced and sang for them. It was all they could afford and it was perfect.

Katniss was married. At a point in her life she thought of this as weakness and as a risk. She chose to marry him despite that.

At first she'd been worried: they'd never had so much space to breathe. Gale never slept in a room with less than three kids, and Katniss never left her room without her mother withering away—or later, thriving with medicine—in the kitchen. The table is empty, and there are no snoring children.

(It is quiet.)

Gale lights a fire. They're toasting bread, a district 12 tradition. It's supposed to be a silent, romantic affair. They can do silent, but Katniss Hawthorne does not do romantic. He toasts the bread, breaks it, gives her the bigger half.

(It's like the woods, she realizes.)

He feeds her the bread sweetly, which she eats bashfully; when it's her turn, she shoves it in his face with no hesitation, squishing his eyes shut as the buttery bread filled his mouth. Katniss Hawthorne does not do romantic.

(Quiet and perfect and just them.)

He gasps in shock, and she laughs, laughs so hard. It's full and free and she gives him it. The unconventionally beautiful parts of her are blazing.

There is a flare in the way she wears his jacket on her small shoulders, barely filling it up, but touching every crevice of every seam, and he knows her smell will cover him tomorrow in the mines. He will smile a little the next day, tuck his nose into his collar: flashes of her smile will fill his mind as he digs his pickaxe into coal. They will motivate him, the images. He always thinks of her when he wonders why he comes to a death sentence 72 hours a week.

(This is what she wants. A life like the forest. Silent steps and knowing each other in every way.)

His fingers trace her lines, and hers pull at his hair. They've done this before—in the woods funnily—but this time, the first time as husband and wife, it feels so much different.

They've never done this within the district, not even at the slagheap. Katniss' insecurity refused to go there and Gale never even suggested it. This is different, though.

(It feels like a commitment, one that Katniss has no fear of.)

It's in the way he watches her hair fall completely from its confinement, the way she kisses the melted butter from his scruff, whispering about how not a drop should be wasted: it's intoxicating. She pushes his shirt over his head, runs her hands down his unscarred back.

She clasps their hands, gives him her last piece.

(Gale will take that piece and hold onto it for the rest of his life. In ever moment he'll hold it close. Because, if Catnip gives you something, she's giving you permission to break her and she's hoping to god you never do.)

—

(They still trade at the bakery, hand in hand now. Peeta Mellark meets them across the countertops, smiling. His eyes catch their hands every time and Gale squeezes hard, clutching onto inadequacies he still feels, and then their eyes meet, blue on grey. And Gale knows.

He knows, when their eyes meet that there's a version of the world where Katniss is not his.

He also knows there will never be a world where he isn't hers.)

—

Later, Gale decides there is no such thing as unconventional beauty: back when he a kid, he was overgrown and small-minded. He was just a blind, stupid boy trying to convince himself he wasn't so dumb.

He had to have been stupid though, because only a blind, stupid person could overlook Katniss Everdeen so many times while the rest of the world looked her straight in the eyes.

—


	6. trinket

**Chapter 6: trink·et**

**_noun_ **

**(a small ornament or item of jewelry that is of little value.)**

—

Their house grows stale, in the early hours of their life.

Gale naturally rises with the sun, cracking his shoulders and brushing coal dust off his gear. Katniss rolls out after, trenching her way over creaking boards. They're cold on her toes. Her fingers struggle through her hair, braiding it loosely.

She walks him to work, even if they're fighting, even when she's tired, kissing him goodbye. The "I love you," is in her eyes.

Today is no different. The cobblestone grates under his boots. Smokey clouds swirl with oncoming storms. A batch of children run by, holding out candles and flint, along with silvery necklaces that weigh down their fingers.

Everyone knows everyone in District 12.

"Mrs. Hawthorne!" Little Astor says, his feet clambering up to Katniss. She tenses. Gale's smile spreads over his face. "Would you like a candle?"

Gale answers for her, lowering himself. Gravel breaks his knees. "These are awesome," he cradles the wax in his fingers, "but we can't." His face shatters, eyes swaying like the pendants hanging from his knuckles. Gale is very well aware that the boy and his two young siblings need the money.

Astor's mother has the Miner's Cough. These trinkets are probably all they have left in their household. Sentimentality is a luxury here, only found in between the cracks.

Katniss adds, tone clipped, "try the Merchant's Sector."

The grey-eyed child glows, before calling over his siblings and taking off. Gale watches them go with a weight in his stomach, heavier than the overalls digging into his shoulders. Katniss rests a hand on his neck.

"You don't wanna be late," she says, tone far away.

They take quick steps to the mine. She presses her lips between his brows, clasping his hand, just before he has to let go and disappear. _Come_ _home_. Twelve hours go by, each hour a millennia. Each breath, under water, laced in dust and death.

He returns, wearing the helmet of his dead father, or maybe hers.

—

They visit their families the next Sunday.

Gale and Katniss always take Rory hunting, but today, "I'll stay with Posy."

It makes him pause, but his sister squeals in utter delight. Gale slides on his leather jacket, and Rory who's tickling his eldest brother's ears in height, makes a noncommittal noise. Their mothers even lift their gaze.

"Everything all right, Catnip?" His tone is soft, and he knows he won't get a straight answer. Or the truth.

She seems small, surrounded by his tall family and grey walls. "I'm okay, yes."

Rory pokes him. "Gale." Smacking him on the hand with a slip of profanity, Gale feels his mother's hard stare.

Posy tugs Katniss' fingers, but the woman looks pale like a ghost, skin white like it never is.

"Meet you at home?" he asks. She nods, tipping on her toes to press a chaste kiss between his wrinkling brows. He's twenty-one, and wrinkling.

" _You look just like your father."_ Hazelle meets his eyes like she knows, and Rory again, tugs his leather sleeve.

" _Gale_."

Rory looks like their dad too. There is no wrinkle in his brows, but it's coming.

—

He tries not to worry about her.

Katniss has always needed her time, he knows. Her space is her thing. Gale lets it go for a few days, and she never says a thing.

Tuesday is long; she walks him to work, like normal, but he smacks his helmet against his pick, and then a lump of coal shatters his toes.

He gets home and he's tired, emotionally: in the mood for some release.

In the kitchen, Gale starts slow, humming a ridiculous song they used to know into her ear, to which she chuckles and spins on him. Her braid whips into his neck. Her hands rest on the crooks of his elbows.

She smiles, that small pull of teeth up into a challenge and a puzzle. He loves when she smiles.

It's a gift, he learned years ago.

Gale snatches her wrist, voice deep and cracking all at once. _"I remember tears streamin' down your face-"_

"-oh no, _stop."_

She nudges his toes with her feet. "Well then, I guess you'll have to sing for me."

"Say please."

He raises a brow, "please and thank you?"

She stares for a moment, rolling her eyes with a laugh. Then, she starts slow, " _little girl, little girl… don't lie to me."_

"I never lie."

A lock falls into her eye, dark on grey, to which he tucks behind her ear. "You're not a little girl."

"How dare you?" He dips to tickle her nose with his.

" _Tell me where did you sleep last night?"_

He presses his lips to hers, laughing. She kisses back, and his fingers are nimble with the tie in her hair. It gives. He picks her up as the strands spread.

She raises a brow at him, pushing both her lips together between her teeth. Katniss pecks his mouth.

He carries her to their tiny room, dropping her on the strained mattress. She bounces, grabbing him by the neck and dragging him down with her.

She is hell, and a blessing, wrapped in stony eyes and a sad smile.

He slips his fingers beneath her shirt, feeling her hips harsh on his fingers, and her ribs up to her small breasts. It bothers him sometimes—not where he finds her unattractive; that's so far from correct—she isn't eating as much as she should. Even with all his work in the mines, their hunting and Rory's help, they're still _starving_.

Katniss moans beneath his hands as he pushes her grey threadbare over her head with her aged bra.

Her braid has loosened from his actions and his hands have left black stains across her body and he _hates_ it.

Gale throws his shirt over his head. He's exhausted today, and done thinking. Katniss is here, prepared to hear his pain. She listens when he's in pain. Sometimes, it's the only time she listens.

Then, his fingernails, chewed and embedded with coal, pull at her pants.

She gasps, but it's wrong. His eyes meet hers and a glint in her greys makes him falter. _Fear_. Katniss looks afraid.

Suddenly, she is pushing away from him, and rolling over. "Catnip?"

She has the right to her no. His mother would slap him if he questioned that. She's said no before, and as has he. They have busy lives. He spends his days underground and coughing.

This isn't _not-in-the-mood,_ this is _don't-touch-me._

He has a terrifying thought: _who touched her?_

He nearly pukes at the idea that anyone could hurt her like that, but Gale has seen the looks at the Hob, glaring at the reaching hands.

He's underground now. He can't glare from there.

"Talk to me, Catnip," he says, "come on."

She does, cryptic and sidelined. "I can't give you what you want." To the point and yet completely missing the mark.

"I want a lot of things," he answers. It's not a leer, just the truth.

He's ambitious. His goals are bordering on crazy. He dreams of overthrowing the Capitol nightly, of the days never coming, where everyone stops watching the games.

"I'm not giving you children," she says, closing in on herself. Her heart is a balloon overfilled. He can nearly hear its beat. "Not here." She turns away, and her back is to him.

_I know that._ He says nothing. He sees Astor, and little Posy.

"We have four already," he settles on.

He realizes she's fighting herself then. His hands reach out to her, and she immediately tenses. His fingers shift over the divots of her spine, darkness of dusk creeping in.

"Do you want them?" Gale asks.

She sighs, thick as honey he's never tasted. "No," his eyes lift, "I don't know. Not here. Never _here_."

It's a conversation so far from finished, but he puts his last words in, if only to settle one of her mind's many disputes.

"I want you," his fingers trail through her raven hair kindly, "everything you'll give me, children or not." He married her, after all.

He touches her shoulder, and she stays relaxed. Her cheek falls on his hand, and a drop, wet and small, slips between his fingers.

His palm leaves a stain on her shoulder, black and scarring.

—

He goes to the baker. It's his turn for a peace offering.

Using their meagre wages, Gale buys fresh bread from Peeta Mellark. The blond boy smiles. Gale hates the bakery: it's warm, and makes his mouth water as the bread rises.

He was never a big fan of Mellark anyway.

The baker boy wraps a loaf and slides it across the counter with a smile. Gale hands him the three silver coins, and takes the bag with a nod. "Give my best wishes to Katniss," he says sweetly, waving him goodbye.

Gale nods on his way out the door, and then he doesn't.

—

She isn't home when he gets there. The bread sits on their countertop, or more like their chair.

There is no counter in their shed of a home. The walls are grey, beaten like a slave. On every surface—door handles, window sills, and chairs— _there's a stain._

Cold, and black, and laced in sentimentalities.

(When Sunday comes, the feathers on his arrows are black and grey, staining the white.

It makes him want to cry. It makes him understand.)

—

The next time it comes up, winter is freezing his nails blue.

She becomes nervous again, thickly braiding her hair, and walking him to work. He hates that she has to fight herself. (Hate herself.)

Once, he comes home, and she isn't there—which is common—but her father's jacket _is_.

He rushes into the woods, less careful than he should've been in hindsight. His eyes skim and search. There's nothing. He checks the snare line and eventually, his venture leads him to the creek, thinly frozen over.

Her cabin. It's half collapsed and aged back to before Panem _. (Before Panem:_ it seems so unfathomable.) Three squirrels on his belt and rabbit in his bag, he drags snow over, and then into the freezing structure.

She is curled up, lonely and cross-legged. A quilt is holding her together. Coals sit empty and white before her.

He resurrects the fire, breathing on the ashes and praying for reprieve.

Then, when it's burning, he collapses beside the broken girl. Among the creaky boards of rotting floors, Gale gathers her in his arms like unspooled yarn. The threads are soaked and frozen. She's in tangles.

"I don't want kids," she whispers, so much quieter than her chattering teeth.

"I know."

"I really don't."

She is cold, the fire is cold. Yet, he feels like he's burning.

—

When a reaping comes, none of their loved ones are picked.

A Seam girl, and a seamstress' boy with blonde hair and brown eyes are. They both die, one in their sleep, and the other at the hands of Careers.

Katniss walks him to work everyday. He returns, wearing the helmet of his dead father, of maybe hers.

—

The reaping arrives once more.

Two shelter kids are picked. Both Seam. Both die. Prim had thirteen slips, and Rory twenty-five, but they both escaped the lottery. Vick: seven, and Posy: two.

_Not here,_ she'd said. _Never here._ He sees it, then. He saw it before, but as he watches a little girl freeze to death, and a boy reaching for seventeen choke to death, it settles in him.

He wants them, so very badly, but not here.

So they never have children, not one. They try their hand at living the best life they can. They starve, and they kiss. Annually, they attend a reaping.

When Gale is about thirty-three, he starts coughing.

(He is glad, he realizes. He doesn't have a litter of children gathering up their memories to sell to the Merchants. He doesn't have mouths left empty when his end inevitably arrives. Not mouths he brought into this world. Prim, Rory, Vick, Posy, his mother, Mrs. Everdeen, and Catnip. His beautiful girl, strong as she hears him cough every morning, dragging him to work.

_Come home. Come home._

He comes home, and he dies there. He is glad, he supposes, that he was too unfit to work in the last weeks. He is glad. His hands are finally clean. When he brushes hair behind her ear, lying on their mattress, her tears fall. There is no stain. She cups his hand, and she sings. " _Don't lie to me."_ His lungs are closing. He is scared. He is glad. He has to be glad.

He is also angry. He is just like his father.)

..

.

.

**_~fin_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...sorry.


End file.
